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WeSaveCalifornia

The project

What the Golden Pacific Powerlink is

A 500,000-volt transmission line proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric, running from the Imperial Valley to the edge of Orange County — across four counties of desert, mountain, forest and farmland.

  • 500 kV

    Extra-high-voltage line proposed across Southern California

  • ~145 mi

    Imperial Valley Substation to the San Diego / Orange County line

  • Nearly 200 ft

    Steel towers — as tall as a 19-story building

  • $1.6–2.3B+

    Projected cost so far, from SDG&E's own figure to the state grid operator's. Neither is final. Billed to ratepayers across California

Where this line came from

SDG&E wants to build this line, but the project did not begin with SDG&E. This is how it came to exist.

  1. The state is driving it.

    Lines like this start with the state, not the utility. State law sets a goal that renewable and zero-carbon sources supply all of California's retail electricity by 2045, with 90% by 2035 on the way. It sets the percentage and the deadline, and it names no power plant and no line. Every year the Public Utilities Commission turns that goal into a portfolio of new generation, and the grid operator is expected to plan the transmission to carry it.

    State law (PUC §454.53) · The agencies' 2022 memorandum · The ISO's 2022–2023 plan

  2. The grid operator called for the line.

    In May 2023 the California ISO approved a new 500 kV line from the Imperial Valley to a new substation north of San Onofre: the two ends, not the route between them. It was the largest of 45 projects, at an estimated $2,288 million, and in ten years of ISO plans only one project has been priced higher. SDG&E's own proposals that year were for work inside its existing San Diego system.

    The ISO's 2022–2023 plan · The one priced higher · What SDG&E proposed

  3. SDG&E bid for it and lost.

    Four companies bid. In April 2024 the ISO chose Horizon West, a NextEra company.

    The selection report · The ISO's notice

  4. SDG&E took it over anyway.

    In August 2025 Horizon West assigned the line to SDG&E. No reason or price was published.

    The ISO's notice

  5. The CPUC decides.

    Nothing is built without the Commission's approval, after environmental review. State law tells the Commission to presume the need unless it is shown otherwise; the route SDG&E has proposed, the cost and safety are still open. SDG&E has not applied.

    General Order 131-E

State planners decided a line was needed. SDG&E chose to own it. The Commission has not said yes.

Where it would go

The proposed route runs from the Imperial Valley Substation in southern Imperial County to the San Diego–Orange County line, near the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Along the way it would cross more than twenty miles of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park — most of which is designated wilderness — along with backcountry San Diego County and the Temecula Valley.

The towers carrying it would stand roughly 150 to 200 feet tall, inside a cleared right-of-way hundreds of feet wide.

Who pays, and who benefits

The cost — $1.6 to $2.3 billion so far, from SDG&E's own figure to the state grid operator's, with neither one final — is recovered from ratepayers. The communities the line crosses are, for the most part, not the communities it serves. That gap between who carries the burden and who receives the power is the grievance shared by every group along the route.

Clean energy is no longer even the stated reason. In December 2025 SDG&E's project page said the line would deliver “large volumes of renewable energy.” By April 2026 the project's new site said electricity has to be delivered “regardless of where it is generated.”

This route has been rejected before

In 2008, the California Public Utilities Commission refused to let SDG&E run its Sunrise Powerlink through Anza-Borrego, finding every route through the park environmentally unacceptable and infeasible. As inewsource reports, the state has rejected a line on this route before, and SDG&E is trying again.

Where things stand

SDG&E released a proposed route map in April 2026 and is accepting stakeholder feedback through early November 2026. A formal application to the CPUC is expected after that. The environmental review and the Commission's proceeding are where this project will be decided — which is why the record being built right now matters.

How the population figures were counted

Population and housing are the 2020 Census enumeration, tallied by census block inside one- and three-mile bands drawn around SDG&E's published route.

Every figure underneath is a range, and both ends are published here. A census block is counted whole or not at all, so the low end counts only blocks lying entirely inside the band and the high end counts every block the band touches. The true number sits between them: between 49,000 and 86,000 people within a mile, in 16,000 to 28,000 homes. Where the campaign quotes one figure it quotes the upper bound and says so — “as many as” and “up to”, never a bare number presented as a count.

A community being within a mile does not mean all of it is. Temecula is on the one-mile list because part of Temecula is within a mile — not because its whole population is. That is why we publish how many communities there are, and never their populations added together.

Falling inside a band is not the same as being crossed. The reservation counts say which reservations lie within a band. The preferred corridor crosses no federal reservation land at all.

And no alignment has been filed yet. The route is digitized from SDG&E's published figure, accurate to roughly ±0.6 km regionally, so every number here will be rebuilt when SDG&E dockets its application to the CPUC. Figures are 2020 vintage throughout, and are rounded conservatively rather than to the nearest round number.

Sources (40)

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